Rock 'Et-Then' Near Curiosity, Sol 82
The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of a rock called "Et-Then" during the mission's 82nd sol, or Martian day (Oct. 29, 2012.)

The rock's informal name comes from the name of an island in Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada.

MAHLI viewed the rock from a distance of about 15.8 inches (40 centimeters). The image covers an area about 9.5 inches by 7 inches (24 centimeters by 18 centimeters). Et-Then is located near the rover's front left wheel, where the rover has been stationed while scooping soil at the site called "Rocknest."

This is one of three images acquired by MAHLI from slightly different positions so that a three-dimensional information could be used to plan possible future examination of the rock.

Curiosity, at that time, sat over in the corner of the PHSF (Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility) at KSC (Kennedy Space Center) awaiting its successful November launch. Klaxons rang above 25 or so reporters, warning of impending lightning activity moving across the Cape.
Silently gleaming in various shades of gold and silver, glistening white, very complicated hardware, plumbed to the max, six wheels, it sat behind a California vanity license plate jokingly emblazoned Curiosity. American flag prominent on the wall.

Curiosity, the rover, the descent aeroshell, and the, I’ll admit, a little sinister-looking, descent stage, the “sky crane” were all on display. Blue-suited figures were everywhere. This was the “clean room” after all.

It's really amazing when you think about it. We've sent a remote controlled probe to a distant planet (a planet not inhabited by humans). And we got a high resolution photos from that planet.
And it's Mars, a planet that's fueling our imagination for centuries...

http://www.arcataeye.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/This-reporter-with-aeroshell.jpg
Curiosity, at that time, sat over in the corner of the PHSF (Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility) at KSC (Kennedy Space Center) awaiting its successful November launch. Klaxons rang above 25 or so reporters, warning of impending lightning activity moving across the Cape.
Silently gleaming in various shades of gold and silver, glistening white, very complicated hardware, plumbed to the max, six wheels, it sat behind a California vanity license plate jokingly emblazoned Curiosity. American flag prominent on the wall.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has lately been investigating the wind and radiation on Mars, providing data on some uniquely Martian weather phenomena.

The probe’s main objectives on Mars are to scour the planet for signs of ancient habitability. “But we also have some pretty important goals of studying the modern environment,” said geophysicist Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist for Curiosity during a press conference today. ”And it’s a pretty dynamic environment.”

Previous Mars probes, such as Spirit and Opportunity, bounced to the ground using inflatable air-bag like systems that needed to roll across a relatively flat surface. Curiosity’s more accurate landing system allowed the rover to land in an area with more slopes, which has much more dynamic wind patterns. The probe measured these patterns with its Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) and found that, much like hilly places on Earth, Gale crater has strong upslope winds during the day and downslope winds at night. Though Curiosity hasn’t yet taken any pictures of them, its wind sensors also seem to indicate that whirlwinds are often rushing by the rover

REMS’s pressure sensor has also been investigating how atmospheric pressure changes seasonally on Mars. Curiosity landed on the Red Planet during a time when atmospheric pressure was at its lowest point but as springtime breaks out in the Southern Hemisphere, carbon dioxide is vaporizing off the planet’s enormous dry ice cap and thickening the atmosphere. Earth’s thick atmosphere is relatively unperturbed by such activity at our poles but this action causes Mars’ atmosphere to change by as much as 30 percent from season to season. Scientists are eager to watch these changes from the ground to build better models of Mars’ atmosphere.

“If we can find out more about the weather and climate on present Mars, it gives us more confidence for predicting how Mars looked in the past,” said planetary scientist Claire Newman from Ashima Research, a collaborator on the REMS instrument.

Curiosity has been monitoring radiation during its stay on Mars with its Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD). These are some of the first detailed radiation measurements from the Martian surface and have shown that radiation fluctuates by 3 to 5 percent each day on Mars. As the Martian atmosphere thickens during the night, it becomes more effective at shielding against ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun and interplanetary space.

Finally, Curiosity completed its first analysis of Martian atmosphere, thanks to its spectrometer.

So it's full of CO2 and no methane at all which is sad news for scientists because ... well here what they say:

About 90% of the methane in our atmosphere is produced by living organisms. Methane could also be a precursor for the formation of simple life. The fact that Martian air contains no methane would suggest that there is no life on Mars. Or at least life as we know it…

Click to expand...

And here's a brand new fantastic image of the Rocknest site (where Curiosity is currently located). Real image on the left, and white-balanced on the right hand side.

You can see how wind has blown the sand/soil into a dune-like formation, and also dusted the rocks.

Curiosity has analysed Martian atmosphere (see my post above) and now it properly measured radiation dose rate. Radiation can destroy near-surface organic molecules. And that's why it's a life limiting factor to habitability. Mars' atmosphere reduces the radiation dose compared to what we saw during the cruise to Mars by a factor of about two. Mars atmospheric pressure is a bit < 1% of Earth's. It varies somewhat in relation to atmospheric cycles dependent on temperature and the freeze-thaw cycle of the polar ice caps and the resulting daily thermal tides.

So how about humans? What fate awaits them on a bold and likely year's long expedition to the endlessly extreme and drastically harsh environment on the surface of the radiation drenched planet? How much shielding would people need?

Absolutely, the astronauts can live in this environment. It's not so different from what astronauts might experience on the International Space Station. The real question is if you add up the total contribution to the astronaut's total dose on a Mars mission can you stay within your career limits as you accumulate those numbers. Over time we will get those numbers.

Much of the internet is buzzing over upcoming “big news” from NASA’s Curiosity rover, but the space agency’s scientists are keeping quiet about the details.

The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

“This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” Grotzinger told NPR in an segment published Nov. 20. Curiosity’s SAM instrument contains a vast array of tools that can vaporize soil and rocks to analyze them and measure the abundances of certain light elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen – chemicals typically associated with life.

The mystery will be revealed shortly, though. Grotzinger told Wired through e-mail that NASA would hold a press conference about the results during the 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 3 to 7. Because it’s so potentially earth-shaking, Grotzinger said the team remains cautious and is checking and double-checking their results. But while NASA is refusing to discuss the findings with anyone outside the team, especially reporters, other scientists are free to speculate.

“If it’s going in the history books, organic material is what I expect,” says planetary scientist Peter Smith from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Smith is formerly the principal investigator on a previous Mars mission, the Phoenix lander, which touched down at the Martian North Pole in 2008. “It may be just a hint, but even a hint would be exciting.”

Smith added that he is not in contact with anyone from the Curiosity team about their results and offered his assessment as an informed outside researcher.

Organic molecules are those that contain carbon and are potential indicators of life. During its mission, Phoenix heated a sample of soil to search for organics but these efforts were stymied by the presence of perchlorates, chemical salts that sit in the Martian soil. Perchlorates react to heat and destroy any complex organic molecules, leaving only carbon dioxide, which is abundant in the Martian atmosphere.

The Viking landers, which explored opposite sides of Mars in the late 1970s, also conducted a search for organic molecules and came up empty. For decades afterward, astronomers considered Mars to be a dead planet, with conditions not very conducive to life. After the results from Phoenix, scientists realized that perchlorates were probably messing with those earlier findings as well, and could account for their negative outcome.

Curiosity’s suite of laboratory instruments are able to slowly heat a sample in a way that doesn’t trigger the perchlorates. They can also weigh any molecules present, determining how much carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen they are made from. Simple organic compounds wouldn’t be completely shocking, said Smith, since these probably come from meteorites originating in the asteroid belt and probably are around on present-day Mars. But they would indicate that the building blocks for life are present on Mars and might only need the addition of water, which Mars had in the past, in order to produce organisms.

“If they found signatures of a very complex organic type, that would be astounding,” said Smith, since they would likely be leftovers from complex life forms that once roamed Mars. But the odds of finding such a startling result in a sample of sand scooped from a random dune are “very, very low,” Smith said.

Smith cautioned against speculating too much, since rumors have a way of spreading rapidly when it comes to any discussion of potential life on Mars. During his tenure on the Phoenix mission, his team was evaluating the interesting perchlorate results, which they kept secret during analysis. Rumors got out and then became worse when some unsubstantiated report claimed a member of his team meeting was meeting with the White House.

“When you keep things secret, people start thinking all kinds of crazy things,” he said.